


The Anatomy of Cold

by soupypictures



Category: Band of Brothers (TV 2001)
Genre: Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:35:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29906724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soupypictures/pseuds/soupypictures
Summary: No man slept alone in the forest.
Relationships: Lewis Nixon/Richard Winters
Kudos: 30





	The Anatomy of Cold

**Author's Note:**

> I've been battling with the particular type of inability to create that is associated with, I suppose, living and working during a pandemic. I'm posting this now as opposed to when I feel fully satisfied because I think it'll do me good to post SOMETHING as opposed to just fiddling with it forever. Please enjoy!

_Bastogne._

Pennsylvania had been cold. He’d shivered there before, in the winter when he’d forgotten his scarf and had to walk to school with the chilled air snaking down his collar. He thought he’d known cold and he’d been a fool. _This_ cold permeated every cell of his body and took residence in his marrow. When he sat still at CP and stared out into the trees he imagined his frozen blood pumping sluggishly through his arteries and veins, crystals of ice making microscopic lacerations in his capillaries.

One night, Dick whispered this to Nix in the dark and quiet. Nix was next to him in the foxhole he had dug for himself to hide in the morning hours. Dick found himself there every night, his own shallow attempt empty and abandoned and no one came looking for him there anymore. No man slept alone in the forest.

“That’s uh, that’s some kind of imagination you got there, Dick.” 

“I thought I knew what it was like to be cold.” He clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering.

“This isn’t one of the experiences made better by talking about it.”

“Sorry.”

Nix slid his arm around Dick’s shoulders and pulled him closer. A minute portion of the chill was dispelled and Dick leaned gratefully into his friend’s body. “I didn’t mean stop talking. Just stop talking about how cold we all are.”

“I don’t know if I have anything else to talk about.” He tipped his helmet to the side to better fit himself against Nix.

Nix eased himself around to accommodate Dick’s closeness. “Then let me tell you what I heard when I was at HQ.”

Nix’s meandering tale told _sotto voce_ warmed Dick on the inside, somewhere close to his heart in a place only Nix had ever managed to touch. He chuffed out a laugh when the story called for it and imagined that spot near his heart slowly warming up the marrow of his bones. 

Then they were quiet with both their blankets spread over them to trap their meager body warmth close. The tarp over top the foxhole protected them from the night snow and prying eyes. Nix would be up in a few hours to inspect the line, check for penetration, and put his eyes on the lay of the land to make sure, at the very least, nothing had gotten worse. And so, Dick had a few hours to get as warm as he ever did and to let himself melt outside of the box that he kept carefully built up around him to contain all the parts of himself that didn’t serve him in a time of war. 

“There you go,” Nix whispered, and Dick closed his eyes and slept.

* * *

The next morning as he shivered through his shave he let himself think about that box he’d built to store everything he wasn’t allowed to be. It felt too small to hold him anymore. There were some moments that he even let himself think he’d earned it, the right to feel however he did, these days spent in combat with bullets zipping by finding their end in his men, his boys, sending them home or to a grave. And there, right by his side whenever he needed him, was Nix. Nix who was a good officer and an even better friend. Nix, who was _his_ best friend. Nix, Nix, _Nix._

_What would he say?_ Sometimes, in these early moments when he was shivering by himself while Nix slept in their foxhole, Dick thought about Nix’s little smirk and nearly convinced himself that he felt the same way. He lived in that thought for as long as he could before the first artillery barrage tore through the trees and shrapnel through his men.

* * *

He stared into the near distance, unblinking. He let his vision lose focus and the snow on the ground blurred into the snow on the trees and dusting the tops of the men’s helmets. A bright white mass blanketing everything. It muffled the sounds of his men. Their words, their chattering teeth, their shuffling through the forest to relieve themselves. Their footsteps crunched on new snow but that sound didn’t travel. He was here watching, listening, unmoving.

“Dick? You alright?”

He shook his head and wiped at his eyes. They were watering from his staring and the moisture felt sharp. “Fine, I’m fine.”

Nix gave him a disbelieving look but didn’t press him, getting on with the business that brought him to battalion CP. 

* * *

Losing men hadn’t gotten any easier, not really. He’d just gotten numb. That was necessary to do the job. It was like the cold — you just had to keep moving to survive it, and someday you’d thaw out and have to deal with the effects. So he kept moving, and he shivered in the CP during the day, there for the men when they needed him. He wanted to be more present, out on the line with them, but that wasn’t his job anymore. He wasn’t responsible for just Easy. 

“It’s better for the whole battalion that you’re in charge, Dick,” Nix assured him. They were fumbling around in the dark of the foxhole to settle themselves in the warmest possible configuration under their blankets. “Easy is better off with you giving orders to Dog and Fox, too. You gotta think about it that way.”

“I’ll try, Nix.” He sighed, shivers wracking through him.

Nix shoved at his shoulder. “C’mon, lie down, let me warm you up.”

Dick moved as Nix directed, like he always did, and shivered for additional reasons as Nix’s arm slid over his side and his breath warmed the back of Dick’s neck. Nix was pressed up against him, knees tucked in behind his. A lover’s embrace. The cold started to slip away and the numbness, too. The warm spot by his heart ached. This was dangerous. “Lew.”

“It’s alright.” Nix’s voice was soft, comforting, like Dick was a child with a skinned knee. He was grateful for that, but his thawing heart burned for more, like frozen fingers warming up by a small fire, the change in temperature a shock to the system.

He inhaled deeply. “Nothing’s _alright_.” And at least that was a truth he could speak.

“We’ll get through this, just like we got through everything else.” Each word was accompanied by Nix’s warm breath doing more to warm his skin than the collar of his jacket ever could.

“Not all of us,” Dick responded darkly. There was no way around that one, not even for Nix. He kept going to prevent Nix from trying to comfort him in this. “I know it’s war. I’m lying in a hole in the ground with you, not even in a cot set up in a tent and the truth is … the truth is I don’t know how much longer I can hang on like this.” He said it at a whisper like a confession. And maybe he meant the cold, or the death, or all the problems with command of Easy, but with Nix right there and holding him close maybe it was all of that and this too.

“You just need a few hours of sleep and you’ll be right as rain.”

He sighed and carefully rolled over to avoid disturbing the blankets trapping their warmth. “Nix, that’s—that’s not all I mean.” It was dark in their hole, but enough moonlight slipped in under the edge of the tarp to be able to see the shape of him and his well-worn memory filled in the rest. “I’ve been keeping something from you.”

Nix smiled the one he knew was just for him, a gentle teasing tone sure to accompany it. “I’m the intelligence officer, Captain Winters. You have no secrets from me.”

Dick wasn’t entertaining Nix’s deflections. “I mean it, Nix. This whole time, I… it’s been something with me and I have to let you know, now. I should have said something sooner, you have the right to know—”

“It’s not a hardship to share a foxhole with you.”

“Nix—”

But his friend was determined to keep him from putting the words out into their shared air. He clutched Dick’s side and then slid his hand down his arm, pausing for a moment before slipping his hand around Dick’s and squeezing it gently. “I said, you have no secrets from me, Dick.”

He hung on tightly to Nix’s hand. “Please, let me say it.” Nix tipped his head in assent and somehow settled even further against the frozen dirt floor of their makeshift bed. “I do love you. Above all other men, I love you. Should I be damned for it, so be it—”

Nix hushed his confession with a gentle kiss pressed to his mouth. “Should you be damned, the rest of us have no chance at heaven. And I want no part of anyplace without you. After all, I followed you when you decided you wanted to jump out of perfectly good airplanes. Hell can’t be worse.”

“You shouldn’t say that.”

“Honey, on the long list of things I shouldn’t say and did anyway, that one doesn’t even rate.”

Dick returned the chaste kiss and then let Nix huddle up against his chest. His heart, now fully thawed and occupied wholly by Captain Lewis Nixon, could rest through the night. And maybe, when Nix woke up and left their foxhole to walk the line, it would stay warm until they laid down like this again.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading, and any feedback you offer. :) you can find me on tumblr at yessoupy, where i've been mainlining hbo war (again) for the last several months.


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